Thursday, August 17, 2017

The "Terrible Andersons"

Carroll Hall posted these newspaper ads from 1974 on his "Vintage TV & Wrestling Nostalgia" blog several months back, but we somehow missed them at the time.

Graphics for the second weekly taping of
"Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling"
hosted by Les Thatcher

I love the reference in the second ad to "the terrible Andersons." Right around this time, the Andersons were feuding primarily with Sandy Scott who was taking various different partners to challenge the Minnesota Wrecking Crew including Bearcat Wright, Bob Bruggers, Danny Miller, Jerry Brisco, and occasionally his brother George Scott (who was booking the territory at the time and not wrestling full-time.)

I love seeing these ads. WLOS-13 out of Asheville, NC, was one of the two stations I was able to watch Mid-Atlantic Wrestling on growing up. I grew up in east Tennessee but was fortunate that our cable company carried this station back before cable ops were prohibited from carrying out-of-market stations.

MID-ATLANTIC WRESTLING ON WLOS

During the time period reflected in these ads, WLOS carried a second, separate version of the "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" show hosted by Les Thatcher. Just like the primary show hosted by Bob Caudle, it was taped at the studios of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC.

Les Thatcher and Bob Caudle
Hosts for the two separate hours of "Mid-Atlantic
Championship Wrestling" in 1974

The Thatcher show had huge ratings in the Asheville market, sometimes garnering a 60-share in the Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville TV market. This meant that 60% of the televisions that were on during that hour in that market were tuned to "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling." These were huge numbers for any program at any time in any era.

In October of 1975, that second hour of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling was replaced by a new program called "Wide World Wrestling" that was hosted by longtime Atlanta announcer Ed Capral. This gave that second JCP show a distinct name and identity.

Thatcher also hosted the localized promotional spots that were inserted into the programs in each market that promoted the arena house shows.